In 1837, Georgia lawmakers authorized a “Lunatic, Idiot, and Epileptic Asylum.” Five years later, the facility opened as the Georgia Lunatic Asylum on the outskirts of the cotton-rich town that served as the antebellum state capital.

More Inside

Where Iberian Pig takes its inspiration from all of Spain, Cooks & Soldiers focuses on the Basque region, which gained an international profile during the craze over molecular gastronomy and its first exponent, Ferran Adrià of elBulli.

More Inside

Southbound magazine, the newest ancillary title from the publishers of Atlanta magazine, showcases the top travel destinations in the Southeast. We visit idyllic small towns and exciting cities in search of outstanding vacation opportunities.Inside Southbound

Custom Publication

Georgia offers diverse places to see and things to do, from the mountains in North Georgia to the coasts of Savannah and The Golden Isles. Take a tour in your own backyard and visit all that our great state has to offer. Begin your tour

Dining in has its advantages: You can wear what you want, eat when you want, and drink as much as you like. To craft the perfect dinner party but skip dirtying the kitchen, look to these seven purveyors for the best meat, cheese, pasta, wine, and dessert.

AJ Ghent Band introduces sacred steel guitar to the masses

As openers for Zac Brown Band, the group showed off the African American gospel style pioneered by Ghent’s family

When the bearded white dude introduced himself, AJ Ghent was nonplussed. “I didn’t have a clue who Zac Brown was,” recalls Ghent, whose band was rolling into a midnight set when Grammy winner Brown entered the almost empty Dixie Tavern one evening last summer. After the gig, Ghent and Brown hung out, talking. They didn’t leave the tavern until seven in the morning. “We clicked right away,” says Ghent.

Since then, the AJ Ghent Band has opened for Brown nationwide, introducing audiences to the evolution of “sacred steel,” an African American gospel style pioneered by Ghent’s great-uncle Willie Eason; grandfather Henry Nelson; and father Aubrey Ghent Sr. “They’re like the kings of sacred steel, but I didn’t want to be defined by what they’d done, or be stuck inside the box of a church environment,” says Ghent, twenty-seven, who moved to Atlanta from Florida in 2012, building on a regional following while playing with anomalously influential bandleader Col. Bruce Hampton.

The group is at work on a debut album for Brown’s Southern Ground Artists label. “I’d like to create the energy of a live experience with a studio album,” says Ghent, for whom the live experience has changed. “I knew small clubs and pizza joints. Then we played the Georgia Dome with Zac, and it was like adjusting your ears to the sound of a million people screaming.”

This article originally appeared in our July 2014 issue under the headline “From Altar to Arena.”